Suggestions for upcoming patch

Droprates are always a double-edged sword. Either they are too high and everyone finished the season after a week or they are too low and people stop playing because they can‘t find shit at all. I mean... what Worth is any effort if you don‘t get rewarded for that?

There is always a disparity between core gamers and casual gamers. The MXL team need to make up their mind on which group they want to satisfy. And in the end there are still people who will complain. No matter what they do.

The only suggestion I‘d agree with is buffing the act bosses.

with all the d3 suggestions going on im surprised no one suggested a treasure goblin like monster in median...

HechtHeftig wrote:There is always a disparity between core gamers and casual gamers. The MXL team need to make up their mind on which group they want to satisfy.

Dunno if you meant that as you wrote it or if you just worded it badly.

They definitely don't need to make a decision for which half of the player base they want to support. The idea is to make it balanced across the entire audience. Deciding to support the core gamers is what drives a lot of casuals to single player, when the goal is to create a more interactive, multiplayer game and increase the reach and popularity.

Encouraging people to play together on realm is the idea. Not fun by yourself. I think they're catering to everyone at this point since sp has everything you would want as well.

L H wrote:
HechtHeftig wrote:There is always a disparity between core gamers and casual gamers. The MXL team need to make up their mind on which group they want to satisfy.

Dunno if you meant that as you wrote it or if you just worded it badly.

They definitely don't need to make a decision for which half of the player base they want to support. The idea is to make it balanced across the entire audience. Deciding to support the core gamers is what drives a lot of casuals to single player, when the goal is to create a more interactive, multiplayer game and increase the reach and popularity.

Probably the 2nd one

Yeah what I meant is that especially in case of droprates, casual players like me don't find it really fun playing an assassin who can't even farm TA with 500 sigs farmed at Nilathak at a decent speed. It's like nothing is dropping for me at all. It's like there's a barrier that says: "Nope. Not for you."

And now the suggestion to reduce drops was made. I can't think of this idea as any good. Of course, my necro just blarghs through everything and easily farms, but other chars aren't even close as "balanced".

The drop rates are exactly fine as they are. The main problem is the imbalance between characters. Of course, if you play Holy melee pala, you'll easily plow through everything. Same goes for Treewarden and nearly any barb. But there are some builds that aren't even close as supported as those (I know, Holy melee needed a rework. I don't deny that.) like Stormzon (which has basically no early game items like very other build. There aren't even many endgame items), Clawsin (I tried a couple of them, but without dying at least 20 times you won't get a single charm with TU gear alone)

So what this all comes down to is a complete imbalance between character classes. However there are steadily new things introduced that break the balance. I personally think that there should be every uber available for every character/build. No, I don't mean that every build should be able to farm all ubers. I just mean, that every build should have access to every uber. However, the new Baal completely goes against that. Any summoner build is simply fucked and needs to find a way to get rid of him, just for the sake of getting a charm that's not even useful for that build. So what's the only option? Not killing him and not caring about that charm. The same goes for Torajan Jungles. If my throwsin needs 40 minutes and 3 deaths just to get to Akarat, that's not fun, if you know that a Treewarden or a Totemancer just run/teleport through the level without any effort and get to Akarat within 3 minutes.

Anyway, back to topic. The good thing about SP was that there was a place for casual gamers like me, with increased drops. I agree, the drops were ridiculous in the last few patches, but before MXL 2017, those drop rates were fine. All it needed for SP was halving those drops and done. But now they're the same like in MP and I wonder why. As someone who plays 1-2 hours a day at max, I simply can't afford spending 10 hours in TA just to find 1 item that helps me further. Reducing drop rates is no way to go for me.

And another point is that there are too many useless SU's and sets. I'm glad that the mxl team is working on that. I really am. But reducing the droprates, without having an equal amount of moments like "Oh, that item is nice and can actually help my build. It's not best, but it's better than my TU gear/rw." implemented, this is a bad suggestion for casual players.

TL/DR & to sum up my wall of text:
-the imbalance between characters and builds makes the game too easy for those OP builds. But those builds are mainly played, which results in a fast ending ladder.
-reducing droprates won't help making the ladder longer. It will only repel the casual players like me, as the core gamers get their illusion of a longer ladder just because they had to spend 15 minutes longer to get their perfect gear. Especially with the difference in droprates between SP and MP gone, casual players like me don't seem to have any place here anymore. What good is farming for hours without any visible improvement?

Just to point one thing out: I started playing SP because I had no internet connection for half a year. But I liked that I didn't have to farm for hours without any improvement, that's why I stayed in SP. However, even before I started playing SP, there were tons of new people in MP who simply didn't log in anymore, just because the farming didn't help their builds at all and they got tired of playing. I was online at the start of the last 2 ladders. And when the current the ladder started, my friendlist was basically dead except for LH, who threw me out of his flist and RandomOnions, who I just added because of the Swarm, but since nobody else from that clan was on, I went back to SP. However, all those other players, that were in my flist before, were gone. Those were casual players like me. Simply because they got tired of farming and being stuck due to that invisible wall. I remember back then before I started playing SP, that one guy, who played a bowazon. I basically made all charms for him, because he couldn't do it. And in Duncraig, he was only there to hold my TP open, so I could kill assur. Is that fun? Ofc not.

Yes, new players will eventually come, but they will leave just as quickly if no measures are taken agains the imbalance. Yes, Summoner nec and Totemnec are OP atm as well.

Another point: the whole game right now is not balanced around party play. "Oh you want to farm Tristram? You better do it on your own, because only 1 box drops instead of 1 box for every player in the party & area." "Oh, you want to farm arcane crystals at Mephisto in hatred to improve yourself? You better do it on your own, because others will just take away your loot." "Oh you want to do LC1? You better do it either on your own, or run the level multiple times with friends, because there's only 1 elemental prism and 1 possible upgrade each time." You basically can't play the game from 1-120 with 2 new players, because they need to divide all the time in order to farm stuff or to get their challenges done.

Okay my rant is over now.

EDIT: I know some points I made contradict each other. No need to point that out. I just want a balanced game, where every character/build has the same chances without big differences in difficulty and a game that's making party play worth it.

Edit2: wow this is the first time I got a downvote for a post that I made when I wasn‘t drunk

anyway as long as the one who downvoted me doesn‘t give a counter argument, my opinion remains so your downvote is useless

HechtHeftig wrote:So what this all comes down to is a complete imbalance between character classes.

Basically, this.

There will always be some imbalance among builds. And tbh, there should be. It makes things unique to have one build be good at some things, while another build is good at others. One of the things I hate most about the Elder Scrolls series is that it doesn't matter what Race or Class you play, since the only difference in the end is the minor innate Racial bonuses each Race gets. Every Race has the potential to do everything equally well, which means there's no reason other than role-play for choosing one over another. That trivializes the idea of Races and Classes in the first place and makes the game boring.

That said, some Median builds definitely need a few balance tweaks, be they skill tweaks or gear tweaks. Just like with Hecht's Assassin example, the same goes for some other “intended builds” (that is, builds that have dedicated trees that the devs intend to be played). Feedback Sorc is another example. It's an “intended build,” but trying to farm SUs/Sigs with her is painful, and doing many of the late End-Game Ubers with Feedback spells is nearly impossible. They're slow, do inconsistent damage, and boosting them to reasonable levels is unreasonable due to the lack of survivability options because you're focused exclusively on boosting Mana. To top it off, there's a severe lack of good gear options in End-Game. She's a great Teganze farmer and a good Toraja farmer, but no Elemental, Xis, or Toraja Great RWs can be utilized by the build. Why? It's like the myth of Cassandra, who was blessed with the ability to prophesy the future, but cursed in that no one would believe her prophecies. I know build balance tweaks are constantly being worked on, so it's not really a huge deal for me atm.

To the issue of content buffs/nerfs in general, I've said it before, the problem I have with broad suggestions about nerfing the goodies and buffing the Ubers is that this often doesn't take into account the many non-OP builds out there. A handful of builds/classes can do the important things fairly easily, so that's what most people play. And they keep playing those same builds over and over again, or try out the newest flavor-of-the-patch OP build. As a result, the game seems too easy. But for many other builds, it's not. And implementing broad content buffs/nerfs would further hinder those non-OP builds and prevent people from trying them out at all.

As to people quitting the ladder season after a few weeks, people have different reasons for playing and different goals for what they want to achieve in a season. Many people who quit the ladder after a week or two would do that regardless of how the game, it's balance, or its content were tweaked—and for various reasons. Some get overwhelmed by the content and/or frustrated by some of the mechanics and decide they want something easier, so they quit. Some just play to see what, if any, new content has been added. Then, once they've experienced it, their curiosity is satisfied and they quit. And some just come to blaze through the content as quickly as possible with the same build they play every ladder just for the bragging rights of first to 120/121/125, first Void Charm, etc. Then, they spend a few weeks farming and selling SUs and Charms until it's no longer profitable to do so and they quit. The people who stay behind are generally the casuals (who, as has been pointed out, likely play SP anyway b/c casuals), new players who are frustrated, but still dedicated enough to see it through to the end, and people who are interested in testing, creating new builds, learning new ways to do things with old builds, and/or just genuinely like playing this game. There's nothing inherently wrong with any of this, but simply making the game harder and increasing the grind time alone won't do much to make for longer ladder seasons.

Tl;dr
- Some “intended builds” need some balance tweaks.
- Content buff/nerfs need to take into account the impact on all “intended builds,” not just the few OP builds that everyone plays. If a build is OP, nerf the build or buff other builds to compensate. Don't nerf/buff the content just to balance the OP nature of a few builds. In the meantime, if the content is too easy with an OP build, play another build.
- People quitting the ladder after only a few weeks is a far more complex issue than just “content too easy, pls buff.”

To be honest , im pretty sure most of the majority of the veterans that finish all content after only a few days of a ladder starting and then quit complaining that its "too ez im out" are all playing the OP builds to begin with, because im pretty sure if they were playing some shady assassin build instead of for example, totemmancer/any meta build they would have a much harder time. So first and foremost i agree in what people have said above me in taking a good look at the old-but-still-viable-to-the-point-of-overshadowing-everything-else builds. Im not saying totemmancer or holy melee or unholy caster should be thrown to the dirt or anything, just a very through look, because its become kind of a fad of people quitting early because they play one meta build and quit or knock the difficulty of the mod generalizing it for all builds as "ez". Everyone who's played this mod for more than a week knows median isn't easy, but gets steamrolled with certain builds and some arent even much SU or craft dependant. Has been for many ladders now. But im just 8 so wtf do i know.

Ok, now i am a bit curious. What's all the emo stuff about ladder lasting few weeks ? What is your reason for ladder to last month, two, year ?
You wana play with friends - play anytime.
You wana play with random people - server info tells there are multiple games 24/7.
You need help with stuff - ask in forums.
You want to farm stuff and become rich - spot already taken.

TBH I don‘t know either. I‘m still playing and the last time I looked there were 49 people online. Dead is different. And there were multiple people I was able to help in hatred alone!

Another suggestion for upcoming patch: make the update of the launcher and the release of the casual MXL file at the same time, so nobody will be left behind and is ready for the ladder.

Stackable Arcane Crystals.